Category Archives: Wild Ale

In this episode, we return to Church Street Brewing in Itasca, nearly 4 years after we first talked to them (Pubcast 107, July 6, 2013), and find out what’s changed and taste some of their new brews. Joining Mark and Phil today are head brewer, T.J. Bachorz, assistant brewer Chuck Fort, and halfway through the show Illinois beer glass collector and historian, John Bittermann stops by.

Join us for friendly conversation and a sampling session, including what makes white stout white and how it differs from a regular stout. For the comparison, we throw in another can of UK brew from Harvey’s, their Black Stout. Big thanks to owner Lisa Gregor who also stopped by, and T.J allowing us to record our show in the taproom.

This episode welcomes the original Cellarmaster and the ‘Yankee’ in Brit and Yankee, Lingo, back to the pub, and he’s lucky to be here when we have some special brews to taste and compare. 2nd Shift is a brewery out of St. Louis, MO., who our good friend Kevin from The Wine & Cheese Place in Ballwin, MO. introduced us to. We pop the tops of these 3 girls, and get Lingo acquainted with a new style.

Steve Crider is the brewmaster there, and produced a wonderful barrel-aged saison with brett, called Katy which is delicate brew that tastes like a wine. He has also used the same recipe but with 2 bretts, and christened the result Grace. Our final menage a trois of BA saisons is Annabelle, using a ‘funky’ brett and aging 8 months.

We compare these three ladies of Missouri and arbitrarily rate them to our preference. No matter, they are all outstanding examples of this style, and we long for them to wend their way over the border into Illinois. As you see from the pictures below, the cork in Grace was tough to remove!

So that Lingo ends up with a heavier style as he likes, we’ve managed to obtain a bottle of the original Abraxas from Perennial Artisan Ales, which none of us has actually had the pleasure of trying. We break open the bottle and find out that all they say is true about this great Imperial Stout that regularly makes the top Stout lists that frequent the internet.